Folklife shooting: Why ‘purple green chickenman’ matters

A P-I photo of a very serious event has become the plaything of a very un-serious online audience.

Police detain a suspect after a shooting at the Northwest Folklife Festival at the Seattle Center on Saturday. (Joshua Trujillo/Seattle P-I)

The commenters at news humor site Fark.com are discussing P-I photographer Josh Trujillo’s stunning picture of Saturday’s shooting at the Northwest Folklife Festival.

Their focus isn’t on the man with blood on his face, or the officers escorting the suspected shooter away from the public festivities — but on a festivalgoer gazing from a fence in a green costume.

In true Fark form, they call him “ninja turtle boy,” “safety gecko” and “purple green chickenman,” mock his shocked expression and even Photoshop him into a cartoon of popular superheroes and a photo of Lee Harvey Oswald.

Trujillo could have cropped the unusual observer out of the picture, but he didn’t. What looks silly and out of place to a national, disinterested audience is only too significant for Seattle.

That’s because the costumed observer represented exactly what was so shocking about this particular burst of violence — that it was set in an atmosphere of lighthearted fun.

The figure’s presence also made one other thing very clear — this kind of thing doesn’t happen at Folklife. And never should again. (Read this Seattlest blog post for another take on that message.

Suspect Clinton Chad Grainger is being held on $350,000 bail. Saturday’s incident left three people wounded.